Antarctic Ozone Hole smallest in five years

From MSNBC: WELLINGTON, New Zealand — International efforts to phase out the use of chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-depleting substances may be paying off, according to research revealed Friday by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand.

The Antarctica ozone hole is the smallest it has been in the past five years, NIWA said.

While a one-year reduction in the ozone hole can’t indicate a recovery stage, NIWA’s atmospheric experts say the new information adds to a pattern of less severe ozone holes in recent years.

Satellite data combined with ground-base measurements, including the Antarctica New Zealand Arrival Heights observatory near Scott Base, show the hole reached a maximum area of about 22 million square kilometers (about 8.5 million square miles) and a 27 million ton deficit of ozone this year, compared with 24 million square kilometers (about 9.3 million square miles) and a 35 million ton deficit last year.

The largest hole, according to NIWA, was 29 million square kilometers (about 11.2 million square miles) and a 43 million ton deficit, recorded in 2000 and then repeated in 2006.

“We see a lot of year-to-year variation in ozone holes, caused by differences in atmospheric temperature and circulation,” said NIWA atmospheric scientist Stephen Wood in a prepared statement. “So we can’t definitively say the ozone hole is improving from one new year of observations.”

“However, we have now had a few years in succession with less severe holes,” Wood said. “That is an indication we may be beginning to see a recovery.”

Additionally the recovering ozone above 45km will be altering the vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere to cause more equatorward jet streams with more clouds, a higher global albedo and less energy entering the oceans so that ocean heat content will decline.

Until we understand the physics (and the history) better, there’s no way anyone can say that limiting man-made chlorofluorocarbons has any effect on the ozone “hole”. Was there a “hole” there before we could observe such things? Nobody knows.

The hole has been reduced in size from 29 million square kilometres to 22 million square kilometres in just 4 years. Just about 25% which is a huge ‘improvement’ and not just a freak event but part of a trend over a number of years.

Far too big a change to be anything to do with human sourced ozone depleting emissions. Although CFC emissions have decreased other ozone depleting chemicals have taken their place and indeed increased as the third world has accelerated its development.

beng says:
December 7, 2010 at 6:45 am
===========================================
Could not agree more.
Seems to be another fake “cause and effect” just like CO2.
The ozone hole started a recovery, before the ban on CFC’s had time to take effect.
I seriously doubt if the “whole world” has reduced CFC’s enough to make any difference.

The ozone hole and some corrupt science and media were used to hoax the public so DuPont Corp could replace old refrigerant with new refrigerant and to continue getting royalties that were about to expire on the old stuff.

Of course, the effect of drastically reducing CFC’s on the ozone hole is one of the big success stories of international cooperation on the environment. However, since CFCs have long half lives in the statosphere (>50years) their decline will be slow, as will be the recovery of stratospheric ozone. None the less, many good scientific studies, largely by physical chemists, show that we can expect CFCs to decline and the ozone hole to decrease very gradually over the next 150 years and more. This is a topic with essentially no controversy among main stream scientists.

And yet…..”From September 21 to 30 [2006], the average area of the ozone hole was the largest ever observed, at 10.6 million square miles,” said Paul Newman, atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. If the stratospheric weather conditions had been normal, the ozone hole would be expected to reach a size of about 8.9 to 9.3 million square miles, about the surface area of North America.”

I have always been skeptical about this Ozone hole thing. Not about the lack of zone over the Antarctic but about the hypotheses relating to how and why it is there, what causes it and the like. I strongly suspect the connections go way deeper and are only partly related if at all to CFC’s.

Ozone IS ALWAYS FORMED IN THE UPPER ATMOSPHERE due to the High Energy UV.

The concept that the Chloro-floro carbons have caused a HOLE in it is a big fat FRAUD.

It’s a problem of observation and DATA. (Limited observation time, NO BASELINES, etc.)

Somehow CF’s ARE NOT CHEMICALLY REACTIVE in the lower atmosphere. AND yet they become ABLE TO REACT IN NUMBERS VASTLY GREATER THAN THEIR MEAN FREE PATH WOULD ALLOW THEM TOO in the upper atmosphere? (I worked out the numbers years ago.)

AGAIN an example of “overly educated” people putting their BASIC BRAINS IN A BUCKET and making “something out of nothing”.

This is a topic with essentially no controversy among main stream scientists.
###

Other then the little problems of having never found a real link between the ozone hole and CFCs, or the fact no one understands how the ozone hole works, what causes it and how big it real should be at any given time.

I take exception to the statement that a single year of recovery does not indicate recovery. The conjectured causative is either effectatious or it isn’t. If it isn’t, we should see identical results under similar atmospheric/solar conditions. Further, the article does not discuss the actual measure of CFCs , something relatively easy to do.

Let’s not forget the fact that they had a little “we bad” moment awhile back when they admitted that the CFC-ozone chemistry were not quite correct and it is mainly nitrogen in the atmosphere and solar radiation that breaks down ozone. CFCs may be a non-issue in the end.

Let’s also not forget that the ozone scare was pushed and orchestrated by the major CFC species manufacturer at the time, whose patent was also expiring. So, they pushed the scare and had the current favorite species banned, and guess what? They had a useful, but expensive substitute (under patent, of course) handy and ready to go. Laughing all the way to the back, they were.

The ozone scare was a business maneuver. It had nothing to do with the ozone hole, but all to do with competition and profits.

And, finally, let’s not forget that we have never seen the planet without an ozone hole. It may be that this is the normal state for our world.

Stephen Wilde says:
December 7, 2010 at 6:41 amMore likely the ozone hole expands when the sun is active and contracts when the sun is quiet. An active sun thereby destroying ozone faster in the higher levels of the atmosphere than does a quiet sun.
It is solar activity that creates the ozone in the first place. And 2010 is the most active of the last five years…

MattN says:
December 7, 2010 at 10:17 amHow can the hole be shrinking in size over the last couple of years when 2 years ago we had the 5th largest hole ever measured?
E.g.
2004, size = 30
2005, 25
2006, 20
2007, 15
2008, 10 = 5th largest of last five
2009, 8
2010, 5
:-)

Stephen Wilde says:
December 7, 2010 at 10:34 amCreates it below 45km but destroys it above 45km.
Ozone hole is below. There is almost no ozone above 45 km as the density is a thousand times smaller going from 30 km to 80 km. This is a general problem you have: no sense of proportion. It doesn’t matter what the ozone above 45 km is, because there is so little of it.

The decline in ozone has two components. The first is a gradually decline in total ozone in the upper atmosphere due to CFCs–which are produced by humans and have neglible natural sources, and larger seasonal changes that are accentuated in the south pole. These seasonal changes are due in part to air circulation. Fortunately, CFCs peaked in the upper atmosphere in the early 90s and are starting to come down in response to the international treaty limiting their use. This should allow a gradual recovery of the earth’s total ozone in the upper atmosphere, although seasonal changes can still be large. My air conditioner and refrigerator seem to work ok without CFCs and it’s good to have some aspect of the environment that is improving.

“Ozone hole is below. There is almost no ozone above 45 km as the density is a thousand times smaller going from 30 km to 80 km. This is a general problem you have: no sense of proportion. It doesn’t matter what the ozone above 45 km is, because there is so little of it.”

The lower density with height doesn’t matter. The more ozone there is above 45km the better the ozone below 45km will be protected from the ozone depletion effects higher up.

If an active sun reduces the ozone higher up it exposes the ozone lower down to more attack and encourages a faster upward flow of ozone so the ozone holes grow.

Haigh’s data finds increased ozone above 45km at a time of quiet sun so the ozone below 45km is getting more protection and is flowing upward less fast so the ozone holes shrink.

The level of 45km appears to be the height at which the destruction processes higher up segue into the creation processes lower down.

That accords with actual observations.

All that is necessary is to shift the net effect between destruction and creation from positive to negative and back again. A fine balance can be upset by small changes.

Stephen Wilde says:
December 7, 2010 at 10:41 amHas the Arctic ozone hole behaved differently ?
Well, you are the expert [?]. Her Figure 1 shows total ozone from 60S to 60N where almost all the ozone is created. It is relevant to the effect of GFCs as a whole. The Arctic/Antarctic holes are controlled by atmospheric circulation.

Stephen Wilde says:
December 7, 2010 at 11:00 amThe lower density with height doesn’t matter. The more ozone there is above 45km the better the ozone below 45km will be protected from the ozone depletion effects higher up.
Complete nonsense.

Stephen Wilde says:
December 7, 2010 at 11:00 amThe lower density with height doesn’t matter.
For each one Ozone molecule in the mesosphere there are a thousand ozone molecules in the stratosphere. Doesn’t matter what you do to that lone molecule in the mesosphere.

Oh, of course, because if the ozone hole is largely affected by the output effect from the sun or the lack of such outburst effect, they don’t get Big Funding instead they’d only get back to small funding, naturally, when it’s all natural to them.

How can scientist be serious if they don’t make serious science they can be proud of and take seriously.

BillD says: December 7, 2010 at 7:35 am
Of course, the effect of drastically reducing CFC’s on the ozone hole is one of the big success stories of international cooperation on the environment. However, since CFCs have long half lives in the statosphere (>50years) their decline will be slow, as will be the recovery of stratospheric ozone. None the less, many good scientific studies, largely by physical chemists, show that we can expect CFCs to decline and the ozone hole to decrease very gradually over the next 150 years and more. This is a topic with essentially no controversy among main stream scientists.

That’s the most effective rebuttal of the Kiwi paper that there possibly could be! Clearly, natural trends are the driving force. It has nothing to do with CFCs!

“An Arctic Ozone Hole, if similar in size to the Antarctic Ozone Hole, could expose over 700+ million people, wildlife and plants to dangerous UV ray levels. The likely hood of this happening seems inevitable based on the deterioration of ozone layer caused by the effects of global warming on the upper atmosphere.”

Turned out to be wholly wrong after all. Just like Ms. Signe’s attempts at speculation.

Whether I’m right or wrong I’m performing as well as (if wrong) or better than (if right) than the so called professionals.

I thought it looked a pretty good fit, until I looked at the timeline and realized that the actual measured data were not conclusive by any stretch. It will be interesting to see how it fills out over time.

“For each one Ozone molecule in the mesosphere there are a thousand ozone molecules in the stratosphere. Doesn’t matter what you do to that lone molecule in the mesosphere.”

Each ozone molecule less in the mesosphere will allow one more ozone molecule in the stratosphere to be destroyed.

Less molecules of ozone in the mesosphere will encourage more molecules of ozone to drift up from the stratosphere.

In addition there could well be currently unknown or inadequately quantified processes going on to enhance the effects.

The ozone holes grew when the sun was more active and are now shrinking when the sun is less active. As DCC and BillD say the anticipated rate of reduction in CFCs is admitted by CFC proponents to be far too slow to explain these recent results.

Even Ms Signe anticipated continued cooling of the stratosphere but it did not happen. Stratosphere temperatures have been recovering since the mid 90s as the sun became less active.

Haigh points out increasing ozone above 45km with a less active sun which implies warming up there

Existing assumptions have been trashed by observations.

Once the impossible has been excluded then whatever remains however implausible must be the truth.

Tom T says:
December 7, 2010 at 7:52 am
BillD “This is a topic with essentially no controversy among main stream scientists.”

Oh here we go again science by consensus.
————–
Yes here we go again. There is a consensus of evidence. Evidence, evidence and more evidence tends to carry more weight than a consensus of random bloggers shooting their mouths off.

pmsunsettommy says:
December 7, 2010 at 6:39 am
There were Ozone “holes” spotted back in the late 1950′s too.Maybe it is an irregular occurrence over time?
———-
You’re making thus up.
The instrumentation was not in place then.

An addition in 1958 was a sensor of surface ozone. The sensor was designed and
built at the Clarendon Laboratory, and was similar to the 16 ozone sondes successfully
flown on balloons at Halley in 1958 in being a prototype of the later Brewer-Mast sonde (Brewer and Milford, 1960).

“If these 1958 measurements had been remembered when ozone-loss episodes in
spring in the Arctic were first discovered in the 1980s, they would have dispelled speculation that the Arctic episodes were anthropogenic in origin.”

Atmospheric ozone is measured in Dobson Units, named for the Oxford academic Gordon Miller Bourne Dobson (1889-1976), one of the pioneers of atmospheric ozone research and inventor of the Dobson Spectrophotometer, used to measure atmospheric ozone from the ground. During the International Geophysical Year of 1956 there was a significant increase in the number of these devices in use around the globe and the Halley Bay (Antarctica) anomaly was discovered. Yes, that’s 1956, three decades prior to the allegedly alarming “discovery.” There was a significantly different perspective then because interest was focused on the November increase – now called a “recovery” – in stratospheric ozone levels over Antarctica with the collapse of the South Polar Vortex.

Stephen Wilde says:
December 7, 2010 at 1:36 pmTurned out to be wholly wrong after all. Just like Ms. Signe’s attempts at speculation: “Yes, Leif she had some thoughts in 2006 as follows:
“During the next few years, ozone levels in the Arctic will be strongly influenced by stratospheric temperature, possibly resulting in delayed recovery or record-low ozone observations”.
That is the exact opposite of what has actually happened.
No, the recovery was indeed slow [some think it has not even occurred]. Anyway Betsy and Signe has an update: http://www.eoearth.org/article/Future_changes_in_ozone_in_the_Arctic

Can we really rely on Leif et al ?
Absolutely.

Stephen Wilde says:
December 7, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Each ozone molecule less in the mesosphere will allow one more ozone molecule in the stratosphere to be destroyed, and still leave 999 others unaffected. Get real, now.

In addition there could well be currently unknown or inadequately quantified processes going on to enhance the effects.
Since they are unknown, they could go the other way. You want to rely on unknown effects to support a hypothesis without a mechanism. As Al Gore says: “if you don’t know anything, everything is possible”.

Stratosphere temperatures have been recovering since the mid 90s as the sun became less active.
From http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2009/2008JD010421.shtml
“An updated analysis of observed stratospheric temperature variability and trends is presented on the basis of satellite, radiosonde, and lidar observations […] Temperature changes in the lower stratosphere show cooling of ∼0.5 K/decade over much of the globe for 1979–2007 […] The results show mean cooling of 0.5–1.5 K/decade during 1979–2005, with the greatest cooling in the upper stratosphere near 40–50 km […]

Existing assumptions have been trashed by observations.
With reference to above, no.

Once the impossible has been excluded then whatever remains however implausible must be the truth.
Once pseudo-scientific wishful thinking has been excluded whatever remains however contrary to that must be the truth.

The paper is about surface levels of ozone. I used it because it also states that ozone sondes were flown on balloons from Halley in the 50’s thus dispelling LazyTeenager’s notion that ‘the instrumentation was not in place then’.

The mechanism of the destruction of ozone catalyzed by bromine compounds from the bromine ions in sea salt is unlikely to be relevant to stratospheric ozone (but I’m not an expert).

The comment you extracted from the paper does reveal that people do tend to jump to the anthropogenic conclusion which is not necessarily correct.

Those of you interested in the actual observations regarding ozone over Antarctica may want to look at this web page which gives the historical data:http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/facts/history.html
Note that there are data from 1957 onwards. Note that the ‘ozone hole’ refers not to the earlier data but to the decline observed from 1980 onwards.

When you see a contour map of the ozone hole, the boundary is drawn on the 220 DU (Dobson Units) marker. That is because, to quote from another page on that site,

From the historical record we know that total column ozone values of less than 220 Dobson Units were not observed prior to 1979.

The “hole” isn’t a hole at all, but a reduction to about 50% of the “expected” level, whatever that is. How do we know that the “hole” isn’t the natural condition for the atmosphere over the Antarctic?

Apart from that, the supposed effect of CFCs on ozone in the upper atmosphere is a chemical one. If CFCs react with ozone (which is highly reactive) as postulated, how then is the half-life “over 50 years” as claimed? Sounds like the magical residency time for CO2, which despite exchanging about 25% of atmospheric content with the oceans annually, is claimed to be from “centuries to thousands of years” in IPeCaC AR4.

“Once the impossible has been excluded then whatever remains however implausible must be the truth.”“Once pseudo-scientific wishful thinking has been excluded whatever remains however contrary to that must be the truth.”

Whichever, it’s rotten logic. Argumentum ad ignorantiam, to be specific. One of Doyle’s greatest blunders, and the chief mode of argumentation used to sell CAGW. Detective Sherlock redeemed himself somewhat with this, which is very germane to that topic:

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

“”””” beng says:
December 7, 2010 at 6:45 am
Until we understand the physics (and the history) better, there’s no way anyone can say that limiting man-made chlorofluorocarbons has any effect on the ozone “hole”. Was there a “hole” there before we could observe such things? Nobody knows. “””””

Well Mother Gaia knows, and she says they’ve been there forever; and if you just monitored the apparent ground level color Temperature of the sun, you would know that.

You have a correct analysis. I am a physical organic chemist and I find this situation humorous, if it were not so disruptive and costly. It is one of the many non-problems for which we have found a brilliant non-solution. O3 mixes completely with nitrogen and oxygen in the air. So any “hole” has to be a temporary problem. The clue is that it does not move around but is situated at the pole as an unmixed gradient. It is because any local generation of ozone mixes more slowly at the cold temperature at the coldest pole, since partial pressure depends directly on temperature in accordance with Boyle’s Laws.

Here is a clue. Saturn has a standing wave at the south pole:“The straight sides of the northern polar hexagon are each approximately 13,800 km (8,600 mi) long, making them larger than the diameter of the Earth. The entire structure rotates with a period of 10h 39 m 24s, the same period as that of the planet’s radio emissions, which is assumed to be equal to the period of rotation of Saturn’s interior. The hexagonal feature does not shift in longitude like the other clouds in the visible atmosphere.
The pattern’s origin is a matter of much speculation. Most astronomers seem to think it was caused by some standing-wave pattern in the atmosphere; but the hexagon might be a novel aurora. Polygonal shapes have been replicated in spinning buckets of fluid in a laboratory.”

OR Saturnians produce a lot of chlorofluorocarbons that produce the peculiar hexagonal “hole”.

Bart says:
December 7, 2010 at 4:28 pm
Stephen Wilde says:
December 7, 2010 at 1:36 pm“Once the impossible has been excluded then whatever remains however implausible must be the truth.”
LS: “Once pseudo-scientific wishful thinking has been excluded whatever remains however contrary to that must be the truth.”
Whichever, it’s rotten logic.
indeed, but it fits with many of comments here.

If CFCs react with ozone (which is highly reactive) as postulated, how then is the half-life “over 50 years” as claimed?

and bubbagyro agrees.

Trouble is that they have both forgotten that the destruction of ozone by chlorine (or bromine) radicals is catalytic which means that the chlorine radicals are not destroyed in the reaction, but instead hang around to start all over again. This, together with the fact that CFCs are very stable, long lived molecules (which is why they were used as refrigerants and extinguishers in the first place), so it is quite difficult to break them up to form those radicals, means that the effects will be around for a long time.

MostlyHarmless also says,

Sounds like the magical residency time for CO2, which despite exchanging about 25% of atmospheric content with the oceans annually, is claimed to be from “centuries to thousands of years”

I have bolded the word which reveals the fallacy – if you exchange a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere with one in the ocean, you have not changed the concentration. I do not know whether the ‘hundreds of years’ estimate is accurate, but it is an estimate of the time required to change the concentration, not an estimate of the residency time.

FijiDave says:
December 7, 2010 at 6:29 pmI know that Freon is about 4 times heavier than air.
How does Freon (a CFC) ‘float’ up to the altitude necessary to destroy the O3?

By diffusion:
“The stratosphere is ‘stratified’, because, being an inversion layer, you cannot have vertical mixing, or convection. HOWEVER, you can have diffusion — a random motion of gas particles, through collisions, back and forth, forth and back, which gradually moves molecules throughout a region. Light molecules diffuse more readily, and heavy molecules more slowly. Freon molecules are very heavy, so they diffuse up into the stratosphere over decades. So, the freon now in the stratosphere is a result of freon gas being released over the last half century, and gradually diffusing into the upper stratosphere. And, now that it is there, it will stay there, even if ALL FREON IN THE LOWER ATMOSPHERE DISAPPEARS, for another century or so.”
From: http://cseligman.com/text/planets/atmospherestructure.htm

Chloride and bromide radicals come mostly from the oceans and volcanoes, not from breakdown of freons. There are thousands of other chlorinated compounds produced naturally by inorganic processes that exist in the atmosphere, which have much greater impact than the tiny amount of compounds produced by humans living on earth’s outer skin, with such humans only having access to elements that are found only in the first few meters of an earth with 4000 miles until its core! What anthropohubris!

I don’t know how we can begin to deal with the half-truths propagated by non-chemists and Climate “scientists” here. Half-lives of molecules have nothing to do with steady-state concentrations when modeling equations are formulated. The residence times of molecules like CO2 are used in equations to determine what the steady state will be. Yikes! People here are using this tautologically and it is forcing me to go bye-bye.

Half-lives of molecules have nothing to do with steady-state concentrations when modeling equations are formulated. The residence times of molecules like CO2 are used in equations to determine what the steady state will be.

But if it is not in a steady state, then the ultimate concentration is determined by the difference between the absorption and emission rates, not by the “exchange rate” which is the confusion I was correcting.

“An Arctic Ozone Hole, if similar in size to the Antarctic Ozone Hole, could expose over 700+ million people, wildlife and plants to dangerous UV ray levels. The likely hood of this happening seems inevitable based on the deterioration of ozone layer caused by the effects of global warming on the upper atmosphere.”

Except that UV levels closer to the equator are MUCH higher than under the “hole”. Another alarmist, and totally false, claim.

It would be nice if they would take the same hope for the ozone hole recovery and apply that to the Arctic ice, which seems to have been behaving in a similar fashion (except from its minimum in 2007 – not 2000 or 2006 like the ozone hole). But hey if you believe in something enough, it’s going to be true no matter what.

Yes the Antarctic temperature was higher than normal that year. It seems the size of the ozone hole is completely independent of direct solar activity and more reliant on the air temperature where cold air is required to destroy ozone. Global ozone production is totally flat for the last 50 years showing solar output in this area is irrelevant.

So we have been kidding ourselves thinking we had any affect through CFC’s.

December 7, 2010 at 7:06 pm
And, now that it is there, it will stay there, even if ALL FREON IN THE LOWER ATMOSPHERE DISAPPEARS, for another century or so.”

This does not sound right to me. As you say, it got there by diffusion. But gases diffuse in all directions equally. And unless there is some mechanism by which certain molecules are removed, such as UV breaking certain molecules down, or water vapor condensing, then all gas molecules would be more or less equally distributed in the atmosphere.
The other exception is light molecules such as helium which can reach the escape velocity and go into space. At the same temperature, all molecules have the same translational kinetic energy. Since the formula for kinetic energy is E = 1/2mv2, the lighter molecules go faster at the same temperature and are able to escape.
The post below by jimme seems to support what I say above.

See the following at jimmi says:
December 7, 2010 at 8:02 pm :http://www.epa.gov/ozone/science/myths/heavier.html
“As the graph above shows, the concentration of CFC-11 is essentially constant at altitudes up to 10 km. The UV radiation needed to break CFC-11 apart is shielded by the ozone layer. Because no natural processes destroy CFCs, it survives to be uniformly distributed, both vertically and horizontally. Concentrations drop off rapidly, however, in the stratosphere. As the molecules rise into and above the ozone layer, they are exposed to strong UV, break down, and release chlorine. These measurements are one link between CFCs, increased levels of chlorine in the stratosphere, and ozone depletion.”

On the possibility of an Arctic ozone hole – this probably is alarmist – as I recall the atmospheric conditions over the Arctic are not nearly as conducive to ozone depletion as they are over the Antarctic

In the top field sp view we can see evidence of an occurring break off of ozone depleted air in the 3 o clock position,Although not unusual, this migrates into the mid latitudes .In 2006 when the last significant break off occurred with the concomitant 13th December SPE ,there was a significant decrease in NZ surface T around -2.5c.the upper troposphere t were the coldest on the planet outside of the polar zones.

Geoff Sharp says:
December 7, 2010 at 10:02 pmGlobal ozone production is totally flat for the last 50 years […]
I don’t see the ‘global’ ozone production tabulated or graphed over the last 50 years. Please drill down to where you got that information from.

Good comeback. But there are two (actually more) kinds of steady state to consider here. One is homeostatic, which you are thinking of, meaning an absolute steady state that always comes back to the same state in adiabatic systems. What happens in the Antarctic ozone “hole” situation is homeorhesis—the system is always seeking a new steady state when non-adiabatic perturbations occur in order to prevent chaos.

With ozone, the perturbation is magnetically driven. Ozone is one of the molecules that is diamagnetic. This condition drives molecules away from the strongest magnetic field, whereas oxygen is paramagnetic, i.e. attracted to magnetism.

The south pole of earth (and Saturn, for that matter), has strong magnetic lines emanating from the polar region. This tends to reduce the concentration of ozone near the strongest field lines. These wobble, but are in similar positions year round, and vary in strength. So one can expect to find regions where ozone is depleted in discreet areas, that we now call “holes”, although there is still plenty of ozone there arriving by standard diffusion means. So we have a homeorhetic condition that works itself out to form zones of higher or lower ozone.

Because temperature is less at the SP, replenishing of ozone by diffusion is reduced by the 1 1/2 power of temperature according to the Chapman Enskog effect :

I don’t see the ‘global’ ozone production tabulated or graphed over the last 50 years. Please drill down to where you got that information from.

Perhaps the term global is confusing, this graph shows the ozone data measured closer to the equator at Mauna Loa. It would be a good indicator of the total levels because of the lack of cold air as well as being close to the greatest production area?

“An updated analysis of observed stratospheric temperature variability and trends is presented on the basis of satellite, radiosonde, and lidar observations […] Temperature changes in the lower stratosphere show cooling of ∼0.5 K/decade over much of the globe for 1979–2007 […] The results show mean cooling of 0.5–1.5 K/decade during 1979–2005, with the greatest cooling in the upper stratosphere near 40–50 km […]

Yet that same link also produces this:

“Temperature anomalies throughout the stratosphere were relatively constant during the decade 1995–2005”.

The year of 2002 could be an anomaly, but there might be some clues as to why the ozone hole was the smallest since 1988. The polar vortex of that year split in two and was very weak, possibly a result of a major stratospheric warming event earlier. In my research I have noted that 2002 had some major flare activity which saw the sunspot record move away sharply from the F10.7 flux record. Reading Erl Happ’s blog he also mentioned a sudden stratospheric warming event this year which may have contributed to this years polar vortex (need to research that).

The Antarctica temperature record was also influenced in 2002, showing the power of the vortex or sudden stratospheric warming?

Geoff Sharp says:
December 8, 2010 at 12:50 amPerhaps the term global is confusing, this graph shows the ozone data measured closer to the equator at Mauna Loa. It would be a good indicator of the total levels because of the lack of cold air as well as being close to the greatest production area?
Any solar signal should be present if it is a factor.
Just trying to make people more precise and to make statements that are less sweeping. Same thing with ‘totally flat’. This could be quantified better. e.g. by a regression line with error bars. But, I agree, there is not a clear solar cycle effect.

Stephen Wilde says:
December 8, 2010 at 1:23 am“Temperature anomalies throughout the stratosphere were relatively constant during the decade 1995–2005″.
Any ideas why the cooling trend stopped in 1995 ?
Considering the large variability that interval is too short to indicated a significant trend. In any case, the slow decline of CFCs that started in 1995 is likely to be a factor as already noted.

Geoff Sharp says:
December 8, 2010 at 2:15 amIn my research I have noted that 2002 had some major flare activity which saw the sunspot record move away sharply from the F10.7 flux record.
Most of that deviation is caused by the SIDC record being wrong. Other SSN series do not show such a large difference, and then there is L&P beginning to depress the SSN record.

My comment was not meant to go to that depth, however you are correct about the Boltzmann distribution. So when an outside temperature is measured at say 25 C, very few molecules are actually at 25 C. The huge majority are within one standard deviation but some are within two standard deviations, etc. It could well be that only those helium molecules, for example, that are above a single standard deviation from the measured temperature high up in the stratosphere can actually escape Earth if knocked the right direction.

I said: “At the same temperature, all molecules have the same translational kinetic energy.”
In light of your comments, would you agree with me if I said it this way: “Molecules that have the same translational kinetic energy have the same temperature.”

Or would you prefer “At the same temperature, THE AVERAGE translational kinetic energy of all molecules is the same.”

Werner Brozek says:
December 8, 2010 at 10:20 amwould you agree with me if I said it this way: “Molecules that have the same translational kinetic energy have the same temperature.”
No

The point is that there is a distribution of speeds and the high-end tail is what determines if the molecules escape. Freon [and CO2 for that matter] is too heavy to escape in many billions of years. The decrease in freon since 1995 is of course because of reactions with ozone, slowly eating away at the freon already there.

BillD says:
Of course, the effect of drastically reducing CFC’s on the ozone hole is one of the big success stories of international cooperation on the environment.

Which reduction only BEGAN a few years back ( I still have R-12 in one of my cars, the other 4 having had THEIR R-12 leak out over the years and replaced with R-134A. Production is NOT the same as when it escapes. Oh, and my fridge is still R-12, so that’s yet to be released. Oh, and Mexico and some others kept making R-12 for a while too. Last I bought was about 4 years ago, but it was still available).

But it does look like the price is way up. Last large ‘bottle’ I bought was $200, now it’s closer to $800:

So before you run out in a self congratulatory glow about banning CFCs in the 1990s, you have to also allow for the time lag in their usage and release. Said usage and release still going on.
However, since CFCs have long half lives in the statosphere (>50years) their decline will be slow, as will be the recovery of stratospheric ozone.

So whatever we’ve done since 1960 is not yet fully lagged into the system, eh? So, exactly what is all this hoopla about the ozone hole changing size, year by year, all about again?

Let’s see, 50 year residency time, a couple of decades lag time to diffuse, a decade or so to leak out, a few more years or decade? for production to tail off and inventory to run down… so the hole changed between 2000 and 2010 because of WHAT again?

It simply can have nothing to do with what we’ve done on the surface, given the time lags and YOUR assertion of a 50 year half life. And in ALL cases, that can’t be driving year to year variations (or even decade to decade variation) as the response times are too fast for the preceding lag times.
None the less, many good scientific studies, largely by physical chemists, show that we can expect CFCs to decline and the ozone hole to decrease very gradually over the next 150 years and more.

So it’s up to 150 year HALF cycle time now… OK… So a decade is 10/300 or 1/30 th of a cycle? And we got HOW LARGE a ‘signal change’? IFF the change is 1/4 then it’s not from a 1/30 th or even a 1/15 th input change, and even less so when that input change is lagged by a few decades until it’s arrival at the reaction point…
This is a topic with essentially no controversy among main stream scientists.

Then the “main stream scientists” are not very good scientists.

We’ve got an ozone hole wobbling around like crazy with order of magnitude 1/4 scale variations year to year, and we’re thinking that’s caused by an input signal that’s dramatically lagged and with a decades scale rate of trivial change? Sorry, but that’s “crazy talk”. Something ELSE is driving that hole to change and wobble on such a fast pace. And that something else is dominating.

My guess would be that, just as we have a circumpolar ocean current, we have circumpolar air currents, and those let the south pole be isolated from having ozone brought in from more ‘sunny’ areas. Thus the depletion and hole.

The ACC is arguably the “mightiest current in the oceans” (Pickard and Emery, 1990). Despite its relatively slow eastward flow of less than 20 cm s-1 in regions between the fronts, the ACC transports more water than any other current (Klinck and Nowlin, 2001). The ACC extends from the sea surface to depths of 2000-4000 m and can be as wide as 2000 km. This tremendous cross-sectional area allows for the current’s large volume transport. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current’s eastward flow is driven by strong westerly winds. The average wind speed between 40°S and 60°S is 15 to 24 knots with strongest winds typically between 45°S and 55°S. Historically, the ACC has been referred to as the ‘West Wind Drift’ because the prevailing westerly wind and current are both eastward.

So a nice “blocking wind” to keep things tidy over the south pole… Add in variations in solar input, magnetic lines, galactic particles, stir mightily – but always in place, viola, a hole. No CFCs need apply.

Now if you can show me an Ozone Hole over New York City, you’ll have something.
Leif Svalgaard says:
By diffusion:
“The stratosphere is ‘stratified’, because, being an inversion layer, you cannot have vertical mixing, or convection. HOWEVER, you can have diffusion — a random motion of gas particles, through collisions, back and forth, forth and back, which gradually moves molecules throughout a region. Light molecules diffuse more readily, and heavy molecules more slowly. Freon molecules are very heavy, so they diffuse up into the stratosphere over decades. So, the freon now in the stratosphere is a result of freon gas being released over the last half century, and gradually diffusing into the upper stratosphere. And, now that it is there, it will stay there, even if ALL FREON IN THE LOWER ATMOSPHERE DISAPPEARS, for another century or so.”
From: http://cseligman.com/text/planets/atmospherestructure.htm

So kind of you to provide further evidence that the changes in the ozone hole can have nothing to do with anything CFC, as they are a century scale event, not an annual scale.

E.M.Smith says:
December 8, 2010 at 11:49 amSo kind of you to provide further evidence that the changes in the ozone hole can have nothing to do with anything CFC, as they are a century scale event, not an annual scale.
I think everybody [except the usual crackpots with completely open minds] would agree that the year to year variations have nothing to do with CFCs. Over the century, ever increasing CFCs would have an [easily avoidable] effect. We take improvements even if they are small.
It is like with CO2 [or solar or anything else], people get all hot under the collar when they [wrongly] claim that there is only ONE cause of everything. In the end it is a matter of cost-benefit analysis [aside from feasibility]. On CO2, I’m personally hoping [perhaps against knowing better] that there is a significant effect as warm is better than cold.

Bart says:
December 8, 2010 at 2:02 pmI thought the reaction was catalytic w.r.t. CFCs.
To a point, the freon molecule is broken up [by UV] into Chlorine [and other stuff]. The Chlorine may participate in 10,000 reactions, but it eventually rains out via HCl. The process is complicated, but is well described here: http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/1z2.html

Geoff Sharp says:
December 8, 2010 at 2:15 am
In my research I have noted that 2002 had some major flare activity which saw the sunspot record move away sharply from the F10.7 flux record.
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Most of that deviation is caused by the SIDC record being wrong. Other SSN series do not show such a large difference, and then there is L&P beginning to depress the SSN record.

I don’t accept your argument, and even if correct the large flare activity still occurred. The smallest ozone hole before 2002 was 1988, this year also saw a lot of M and X class flares. If the flares are of consequence the timing is important as they would need to occur between July and September. Do you know of a register that lists the dates of larger flares?

Thanks for the links, but I am not sure they give me what I need. The data link is good as it shows monthly values by day but I am assuming the daily total is an accumulation of all flares on the day. I think only the bigger X and M class flares might be the ones to study.

I’ve been on a quest looking for influences of the Drake Passage on Atlantic SST’s. So far I have found a paucity of information on how this narrow passage might influence the North Atlantic. And it could all boil down to wind. Is this another chapter in “it’s the weather stupid”?

That did it, looking at the data there does not look to be a correlation between flare activity and Sudden Stratosphere Warming(SSW). I moved onto Aurora information thinking the proof of a direct hit and including CME’s might turn up something but once again not convincing. The stratosphere maps from NOAA showing the warming and lack of warming in each case. 1988, 1998, 2002.

Geoff Sharp says:
December 8, 2010 at 9:22 pmThat did it, looking at the data there does not look to be a correlation between flare activity and Sudden Stratosphere Warming(SSW)
As usual, no amount of data will sway the enthusiasts from their ideas, so your conclusion [which was not in doubt], alas, will fall on barren ground and deaf ears [to mix some metaphors].

For argument, let’s assume that ozone depletion is caused by man-made CFLs.

My next question would be: What changes in UV levels have occurred at the surface? This would be the bottom line as to what consequences it might have. I have seen some UV-level vs time graphs for a few sites, and they showed no significant trends. But I’d be happy to be enlightened.

If UV levels at the surface had “spiked” lately (last 20 yrs, say), wouldn’t the MSM have plastered their front pages with hockey-stick UV graphs?